There are many articles about Instant Runoff Voting, but this Associated Press article of October 23 is more comprehensive than most. San Francisco political consultants tend to oppose Instant Runoff Voting, because their traditional methods of campaigning – attacking the opponents of the client – doesn’t work very well when Instant Runoff Voting is used. Political consultants and some of their allies will try to repeal San Francisco’s Instant Runoff Voting next year. The AP story does not mention that. Thanks to Rob Richie for the link.
The article didn’t do a very good job of explaining Dennis Herrera’s position. He would not have been elected city attorney under IRV.
A large share of the district-elected city council members in 2000 would not have been elected under IRV. It was because they were able to continue into the runoff and able to get their supporters to vote that they were successful.
In the Burlington repeal, the big issue was that Mayor Kiss was universally regarded as a nice guy, but didn’t show leadership when a crisis arose.
Thanks for flagging this, Richard.
Jim – hard to know about Herrera in 2001, as he was well-positioned to get second choice support from the third place candidate. But one thing that is true that those runoffs in 2000 and 2001 had much lower turnout. In fact, in ten of the last 14 San Francisco runoffs in 2000 to 2003, turnout dropped to less than 65% participation of the first round – -and in 9 of those races, the runoff winner had fewer votes than the first round leader.
As to Burlington, the repeal vote was closely attached to the Burlington Telecom controversy involving Kiss that came up months after the election. Without that, Burlington would have IRV today. Instead, it now has a system where a candidate can win with 40% of the 1st round vote — and be opposed by 60% of voters. We’ll see what happens next March.
I strongly support runoffs with a 50% threshold over plurality voting, but there are a host of good reasons for San Francisco to keep RCV.
For any new folks —
IRV = THE method to elect Stalin/Hitler clones when the Middle is divided.
34 S–M–H
33 H–M–S
16 M–S–H
16 M–H–S
99
Gee – who has the mere 99 of 99 votes for 1st and 2nd place votes ???
Who loses with IRV ???
STV = THE New Age fix for math MORONS.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V. — pending real head to head Condorcet math — with a App.V. tiebreaker.
#2 Herrera would have needed to have come up with a 40% margin among votes cast for the 3rd and 4th candidates (70-30) or more likely (60-20-20 exhausted). Unlikely to happen in a race in which there may not be clear issues (a city attorney is not really a policy making position).
There were 15 runoffs between 2000 and 2003, three of which had higher turnout, including the most high profile race, the 2003 mayoral race.
Kamala Harris might not have been elected DA in 2003 under IRV. That was close enough that perhaps favorable transfers could have lifted here into first.
Most of those runoffs followed a presidential or gubernatorial election in which the supervisor election was tacked on the end of the ballot. About 15% of voters don’t bother voting for supervisor, and candidate information is swamped under those elections. It was more or less a fluke that San Francisco switched the supervisor elections to even years, and should switch back.
Has a mayor ever been elected with a 40% plurality in Burlington?
“San Francisco political consultants tend to oppose Instant Runoff Voting, because their traditional methods of campaigning – attacking the opponents of the client – doesn’t work very well when Instant Runoff Voting is used.”
I don’t believe there is any evidence for this claim.
What we do have evidence for though, is that Herrera is using negative campaigning against Lee. Which means, if political consultants DO hate IRV because they know doesn’t work well with their favorite methods, then they are NOT responding by changing their methods. So either Herrera has some pretty stupid consultants who are giving advice they know is bad, or (more likely) the verdict isn’t in on how effective negative campaigning actually is with IRV.
We’ll see if Herrera’s attacks have any effect.
#3 correction
IRV = THE New Age fix for math MORONS.